Mater

Marit, someone more technically minded than I will reply sensibly, but how about drastically limiting the size of photos, like they do on here? With under 100kb, we still get lovely pictures...

I use an external hard drive for music and photos and it's fine. It's no more or less likely to mess up than your computer or pen drive. In some ways it's better because if you unplug it from your computer when you're on-line, it's less likely to become infected with viruses.

The safest way is to have everything in two separate places though - perhaps keep the larger files on the external drive and smaller versions on your computer as a back up?

I use an external hard drive to back up my whole computer system. It isn't permanently attached. I just plug it in when I want it, and in between times, back up particular documents on a pen drive. As Harty says, it's no more or less likely to mess up than anything else, but if you want a belt and braces job (which is probably always a good idea, tho I don't do it) what about saving particularly precious photos to the pen drive as well?

Dear Anna,
You don't need to get a hard disk, just put them on a CD or DVD whatever you have, but remember if you want to alter a photo you have to unload it on the computer and then save it again on the disk and delete it from the computer so as not to clutter up your lap-top.

As I live in Italy, my computer gives only Italian instructions and labels but I will try to translate and even if it may not be the exact term as used on English speaking PCs you will figure out what it means anyway.

Your lap-top has probably got about 20GB space on it, half of which is taken up by the printer, the programmes you have installed and so on. The space a photo takes up varies on how you have saved it and to save it you have used a programme which in my case is called Microsoft Picture Management, (MPM) and if you have Microsoft programmes installed, it is the same in your case.

When you double click on your photo you view it through this MPM. Click on the bar “Modify Picture” and on the side you get the choice of “compressing” the photo in one of the following “documents”, “web page” and “email”. If you have to upload a photo on your web you need to compress it in the “web page “ mode and this will reduce it from about 1MB to 50kb- but it will also reduce it in size so if you want to enlarge it, it will lose quality. Whenever I need to upload a picture, first I make a copy and keep the original on the disk just as it is. If on the other hand you want to keep some photos in your computer because you use them frequently then you can compress them in the “document” mode. So from 1MB the photo will be reduced to about 350kb. But the beauty of this is that the original size remains intact, it’s just the “pixels” (what makes up the colour of a picture) that are made less “heavy”. This mode is also useful if you have to send them through email because the quality of the picture remains intact, whereas if you send them directly through MPM the pictures are reduced.

I have kept my photos since 2002 in the “document” format (and back up on CDs)in my PC and it takes up 5GM of my space- but then I’ve got 140 GM space on my PC. That amount would completely inundate your lap-top! Also remember, never work with the original photo keep that safe on your CD always mess about with a copy of the original, which makes no difference- it’s the same, not like the photo-copying system.

I also back up onto an external disc. It's a 5 GB pocket size Seagate disc that cost me about £50. Keeps everything safe away from the computer.

Looks like I'll need to investigate an external hard drive...

You could also backup to the web. There are a number of sites that provide backup services.

It isn't a good idea to reduce the file size of your photos though. The smaller sizes are fine for the web but if you try to print them the quality is very much reduced.

Thank you very much to everyone! There's so much good advice (and Eva, thank you for taking the trouble to translate!), that I now have a few options, depending on what I want to use the photos for in the future. :-)